


The Sleep of Bats

by foolish_mortal



Category: Scent of Magic - Andre Norton
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-05
Updated: 2011-09-05
Packaged: 2017-10-23 10:53:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/249493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foolish_mortal/pseuds/foolish_mortal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-story. Chancellor Vazul finds it difficult to sleep in the cold of winter with the regrets of his past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sleep of Bats

**Author's Note:**

> Now translated [into Russian](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3651291%20) by Greenmusik. Thank you!

Vazul returned to his chambers after a long grueling day. Princess Mahart needed all the guidance he could spare, but she was a quick study and would make a formidable queen after her father. The battle with Saylana had turned her and Lorien from strangers to tentative allies, and Vazul was proud of that. Lorien had thought her a silly girl, something to be protected, but now he saw her as an equal. Respect and loyalty were not things Vazul could have easily engineered, especially for such a stubborn young man such as Lorien, and Vazul thought that against all odds he owed Saylana a debt for doing what he could not. The girl Willadene had proved useful as well, and she was devoted to Mahart out of love and not only duty. Halwice had named her successor well.

Vazul shivered as he dressed for bed. Winter was coming soon, and he was feeling _old_ ,much older than his years. Perhaps it was because he had lived a lifetime in his youth, carving out a place for himself at court as the king's shadowy right-hand. The rumours at court were not so far off in that respect. He knew they whispered about him behind his back about the way he moved and the dark anonymity of his robes. The Chancellor, they said, was a spy and an assassin, carrying out tasks that the king preferred to hide.

Vazul wanted to correct them and say that the only reason he was alive now was precisely because he had given up that life and found another useful niche in politics. He flowed like a liquid to occupy places that would keep him alive for that much longer; he was no blunt instrument like the Bat. Being a king's assassin had a shorter lifespan than most, and Vazul had known from an early age that he was meant for more than knife fights and long cold nights crouched in a secret spyhole. However, he admitted that being the king's bat had afforded him a strange freedom that he rarely found as a chancellor. He had only gone where the king had sent him and carried out tasks in simple ignorance without questioning where he fit in a larger scheme; perhaps there was something to be said about blunt instruments after all.

Vazul ran a check in his room to secure all entrances and exits before climbing into bed. Old habits died hard, and he had not kept himself alive this long by luck alone. Being the king's bat had made him few friends and far too many enemies, and he knew that they were not stupid enough to forget him. However, his fellow assassins had honour, and they knew they were all merely servants to the whims of their kingdoms. Personal vendettas could not exist among them. Many of his enemies had been the closest thing he'd had to friends, and now he had no one at all. Such was the life of a king's bat.

But Sssaaa had been with him for some time, and Vazul had been grateful for her. She had only spoken in hisses and serpentine movement, but he had never been fond of words, and they'd understood one another. Now he was another old man sleeping alone in his bed dreaming of regrets.

 

His old instincts woke him in the middle of the night, and he turned over to find a dark shape laying on the other side of his bed. Vazul jerked away and reached for the dagger in his bedside drawer, but then the figure shifted, and the blanket fell away from his face.

"Nicholas," Vazul began and then stopped. Nicholas did not say a word, and for a long moment they gazed at once another, Nicholas's eyes bright with defiance.

"You said that you would be cold in the wintertime without Sssaaa to warm your feet," Nicholas whispered.

And yes, Vazul found he was not shivering any longer, but now he felt far too warm. He could not look away. Nicholas smelled like pine and smoke, and Vazul wondered where he had been. He hadn't even felt Nicholas climb into his bed, but only the Bat could move so softly that even Vazul could not sense it.

There was a trace of uncertainty in Nicholas's eyes, and it made Vazul bold. He leaned closer till his face was pressed against Nicholas's shoulder. He felt Nicholas's sharp indrawn breath and the shifting of strong muscle. Vazul inhaled. "Athura pine. It only grows at the border of Wallings and Gorm. Do we have a political conflict?"

When he pulled away, Nicholas's face was blank and his brow smooth, which was as close as he could manage to a smile. Vazul smiled back, tight-lipped and stern. "I may not have the healer Willadene's nose, but I was one of your own once and know where to look."

"I have never doubted you," Nicholas said. He let his head fall back to the pillow now that he was sure Vazul would not send him away. He closed his eyes. "Saylana has left her mark on me. I feel old."

"You have grown," Vazul replied. "And being the king's dark hand ages you."

Nicholas shook his head. It made his hair on the pillow spray out into a soft wave. "He may have made me his creature, but I am yours willingly. You must understand that everything I have done for the king, I have also done for you, Chancellor."

Vazul drew in a breath to reprimand him. "Nicholas," he said instead and did not recognise the gentleness in his own voice. "I have told you before. It is futile to pursue me."

"Yes, so you tell me every time," Nicholas replied. "And yet I pursue you still." His eyes were feral and intent, but he leaned forward and pressed a chaste kiss to Vazul's lips.

Vazul did not resist, because the Bat was dark and deadly and beautiful, and Vazul was afraid to want him. Nicholas was his greatest weakness, and he knew it was only a matter of time before it was turned against him. Yet he could not push him away.

"You care for him," Willadene had told him once, and it was then that Vazul had realised he was becoming careless with his soft life in court. He knew she had seen the way he had taken Nicholas's limp body in his arms and supported him while she performed her healing magics. She had seen the care he had taken with Nicholas's bandages and his daily visits to Nicholas's sick bed in the tower.

"He is our most valuable tool," he had replied and given her a forbidding look that had not intimidated her at all. "I must ensure he returns to his former strength."

But she had only smiled. "I am glad. He has no one else in this world."

It was the only moment in his entire life that Vazul had felt entirely helpless. He could not have told her how Nicholas looked so young and vulnerable in his pain, and a chancellor had no right to gather him up in his arms. For children of the sunlight such as Willadene and Mahart and Lorien, love was something they took as granted, but Vazul had never dreamt he would have anything for himself, because a king's chancellor had no more use or right to companionship than a royal assassin. He knew what costs he had to pay for the sake of duty and his king. He had costs etched out in scars across his body, which was perhaps the only thing Willadene could have understood.

Vazul turned his head away. "You have your duties and I have mine," he said. "Yours have nothing to do with me, just as mine have nothing to do with you."

"Do you believe that?" Nicholas asked. "I pass unseen wherever I go. No one knows my name. You are the only one who sees me as I am. Your eyes linger."

"I should be blind if they did not linger," Vazul said and let Nicholas kiss him again. Nicholas was starved for warmth and touch, and Vazul could not deny him.

"Come here, my bat," Vazul said and pulled Nicholas's strong loose-limbed body close. The hair at the nape of Nicholas's neck curled softly around his fingers where it had not been trimmed in some time. As an assassin, Vazul had always kept his own hair prickly and cropped closely to his skull, and he almost reprimanded Nicholas for being careless but found he did not wish to.

Nicholas pressed another soft kiss to his face, and Vazul found it too sentimental. Nicholas was still young and tried to playact the elaborate courtship rituals he saw in every kingdom, in every fairytale story and every pub house song. Vazul did not have the heart to tell him that the two of them had not been created for kisses but so that others might live and love as they could not. Nicholas would understand eventually.

Vazul pressed his hand to Nicholas's back and felt the weary tension there. "Sleep," he murmured. He felt Nicholas's breath puff into the crook of his neck. "Nicholas. I am here. Sleep."

When Vazul spent nights like this, warm with Nicholas in his bed, he sometimes believed that even a king's chancellor and his bat could have something of the normal world. He believed that someday he could make Nicholas smile with his entire face, and they could doze outside in the sunlight of the balcony. He thought that he could return every single one of Nicholas's fanciful kisses and more besides.

But Vazul was no fool. Those wishes would vanish like dew in the morning because Nicholas would be gone with only a whiff of pine pressed into the pillowcases. Then Willadene's damnable nose would flare as soon as he passed, and she would smile at him and keep his secrets. He knew she would be disappointed that he let Nicholas slip through his fingers again.

But Vazul wanted to tell her that he never regretted letting Nicholas leave him, because it meant that he would return some night, smelling like pine or fire or old blood, and Vazul would be warm again for however brief a time.


End file.
